France faces left-or-right choice for president

Nicolas Sarkozy and Segolene Royal face a run-off for France’s presidency, giving voters a clear choice between a conservative who could push his anxious nation towards painful change, and a socialist who would be the country’s first female leader.

After yesterday’s first round election, Royal was the first woman to get so close to the helm. The campaign was marked by suspense, surprise and unusually dynamic candidates who lured voters to the ballot box in near record numbers.

Sarkozy has the advantage heading into the May 6 run-off. Results from the interior ministry early today, based on all polling stations except those French voting in embassies overseas, had Sarkozy in the lead with 31.1%, followed by Royal with 25.8%. Turnout was huge at 84.6%.

Either way, France will get its first president with no memory of the Second World War to replace 74-year-old Jacques Chirac, who is stepping down after 12 years to usher in a new generation of candidates.

Yesterday’s first round shut out 10 other hopefuls, from Trotskyists to far-right leader Jean-Marie Le Pen. Le Pen had hoped to repeat his shockingly strong showing of 2002, but instead finished a weak fourth, with 10.5% of the vote.

Both Sarkozy, a Hungarian immigrant’s son, and Royal, a military officer’s daughter who beat Socialist Party heavyweights to win the presidential nomination, are in their 50s and have travelled long, arduous roads to get to this point.

The winner’s task will be tough: France is a troubled nation, still haunted by the riots by young blacks and Arabs in poor neighbourhoods in 2005.

Decades of stubbornly high unemployment, increasing competition from economies like China’s, and a sense that France is losing influence in the world made this a passionate campaign.

Both Royal and Sarkozy have promised to get France back on its feet – but offer starkly different recipes.

Sarkozy would relax industrial laws and cut taxes to invigorate the sluggish economy, while Royal would push up government spending and preserve the country’s generous worker protections.

Royal, too, champions change, but says it must not be brutal.

“I extend my hand to all those women and men who think, as I do, that it is not only possible, but urgent, to abandon a system that no longer works,” she said.

Sarkozy told cheering supporters last night that by choosing him and Royal, voters “clearly marked their wish to go to the very end of the debate between two ideas of the nation, two programmes for society, two value systems, two concepts of politics”.

Despite Sarkozy’s lead, he faces a powerful “Anything But Sarkozy” push by those who call him too arrogant and explosive to run a nuclear-armed nation. He once called young delinquents “scum”, a remark that outraged the residents of poor neighbourhoods and has dogged him politically.

“It won’t be a walk in the park” for Sarkozy even though he is in a strong position heading into the run-off, said Bruno Cautres, researcher at the prestigious Institute for Political Sciences.

Royal, an MP and feminist who says she makes political decisions based on what she would do for her children, shot to popularity by promising to run France differently.

But she has stumbled on foreign policy. In one gaffe, she praised the Chinese during a trip to Beijing for their swift justice system.

Some of France’s 44.5 million voters question whether she is “presidential” enough.

With results for the nearly a million French voters registered abroad still trickling in early today, turnout did not quite reach the record of 84.8% for a first round, set in 1965.

That year modern France held its first direct presidential election, with wartime General Charles de Gaulle and Socialist Francois Mitterrand reaching the run-off that de Gaulle went on to win.

For Royal and Sarkozy, a scramble is now on for voters in the middle ground and others who deserted the left and right in favour of farmer’s son and MP Francois Bayrou, one of the big surprises of the campaign.

He was placed third yesterday with 18% of the vote.